The number of users, wireless communication devices and types of different wireless communication devices is ever increasing. Also the number of different services offered by wireless communication networks is increasing. With this increase, follows increased demands on capacity and resources offered, or provided by, the wireless communication networks.
The amount of generated traffic in different areas may vary substantially during the different hours of the day and night, and the wireless communication networks should be designed in order to handle even the maximum peeks of generated traffic to a satisfactory degree.
The radio coverage of a wireless communication network may also suffer from spots of relatively bad coverage, where the quality of any radio communication may be unsatisfactorily.
In order to cope with high amounts of traffic at certain areas of the wireless communication network and to improve radio coverage at spots of relatively bad coverage, low power nodes may provide increased resources and coverage. A low power node is an access node in a Radio Access Network, RAN, having lower transmission power than a macro node, generally not much higher than 10 W, wherein low power nodes generally have a relatively small coverage area, or cell, compared to macro nodes. Low power nodes are generally placed within coverage areas of macro nodes in order to boost signal quality and radio resources of small areas within macro cells. However, low power nodes may also be placed outside the coverage area of a macro node in order to provide radio coverage where it does not exist
In areas of sometimes relatively high amount of generated traffic at various peak hours of the day, there may also be hours of the day with relatively low amount of generated traffic. During hours of relatively low amount of generated traffic, the low power nodes may not be needed. If not needed, having them fully active and ready to serve wireless devices of users thereof, may result in unnecessary power consumption.